I’m a Federalist and I’m voting Block. In my riding they have the best chance of beating the Conservatives and this election I’m ABC, Anything but Conservative. I won’t split the vote. Another member of our group comes from a family that's always been Tory. She says these reform conservatives have little in common with the old Progressive Conservatives. These mouthpieces for big Alberta oil interests have stolen the PC brand and tried to hoodwink us into believing they are the same.
We believe the Block or the Liberals or the NDP will all serve the interests of Quebec in Ottawa, and that the worst possible outcome is to give Harper free rein as a majority. He has shown himself a bully with his sleazy attack ads, his suppressing even the voices of his own ministers and candidates. He is a one-man show, probably groomed and financed by the same Texas oil interests who gave us George Bush.
Harper has always been a Bush wanna-bee. He identifies with the same US based far-rightist ideological groups, and fear-based war economy, and has no business taking Canada in these directions.
He came in with a regional party, and is now trying to convince us that the economic interests of Quebec and Ontario are the same as those of the resource based industries of Alberta. In fact we are fast losing our manufacturing base with the higher petro dollar. We’ve lost huge numbers of good jobs since Harper has been at the helm.
We are a country with the least adequate day-care of the G8 countries, where our much touted medical system is in disarray, and where support for the arts and culture industry in Canada is being undermined by Harper.
As Harper clearly supports the dirty oil and environmental degradation taking place in Alberta, and has been making this the center of future Canadian development, he is compromised and cannot implement any kind of carbon tax, or take a serious stand on urgent global environmental issues.
We, the Quebec women's ABC Caucus agree with your anything but harper campaign. At all cost, don’t split the vote. Help to defeat Harper’s gang in your riding.
Robert M. David
· 1 year ago
Why not organize a large, non-partisan event in the last week of the campaign in Ottawa and Quebec City, where different speakers would try to convince voters to vote other than Conservative generally, and strategically in these swing ridings?
Such speakers should not simply be from the usual left, but include "moderate" conservatives and religious leaders, farmers, police chiefs (e.g. the head of the Montreal Police Brotherhood just came out against voting Conservite yesterday), workers and business owners affected by the decline of the manufacturing and forestry sectors, economists against neo-conservative economic policies, as well as artists, women, youth, environmentalists and other representatives. Ideally, similar rallies would take place also in each province, but at least have these two, broadcasted on all news chanels and the Internet.
1st step: a meeting via Internet, phone or in person, to discuss this idea and, if accepted, plan, bring in others, share tasks, etc.
Mark Kuznicki
· 1 year ago
Robert, we could do two large events, or we could enable hundreds of neighbourhood events. I was thinking we could use Upcoming.org to help facilitate this. Check out the AnyoneButHarper group I just created on Upcoming and let me know what you think!!
Jerry Boyle
· 1 year ago
Howdy friends!
With less than 3 weeks left until the federal vote, I’d like to invite everyone to participate in a little electoral mischief.
The idea is to undermine Stephen Harper's control over his image through creative vandalism, to rebrand him through a grassroots, viral and distributed stickering campaign.
I’ve created various promo stickers combining Harper's blandly psychotic face with micro-slogans pitched somewhere between intrigue and mockery. ("Dinosaurs don't evolve" "Alberta Taliban" etc.) For variety there are a bunch of absurdist quotes - fake headlines well-suited to being slapped on newspaper vending boxes. Examples of both can be seen posted on my Facebook wall, or downloaded from the link at the end of this message.
Please join me! In hopes of reaching a critical mass, I've tried to make participating as easy as possible:
1.------------ “The people, divided, shall never be defeated!”
I’ve created a couple of Microsoft word files which can be downloaded from the link at the end of this message. Each file is formatted to print a batch of anti-Harper stickers onto standard 4” x 3 1/3" Avery inkjet labels (label ID# 05164). Both Office Depot and Staples stock Avery labels in this size, 100 sheets (600 labels per box) for around $35 (cheaper for a smaller number of sheets). If you have a computer and a printer, you’re in business.
While not weatherproof, the Avery labels stand up pretty well to rain, and their adhesive backing sticks to most surfaces. The sticker designs I've posted for download are black and white, both for economy, and because greyscale inkjet printing seems to smear less than colour when wet. The labels are partly perforated, but I find it easier to cut them up with scissors. I like to print about 10 sheets at a time, and slap them up on my way to work, or whenever I'm passing through a different neighborhood.
2.-------------- "Crowd-sourcing Dissent"
I hope this action will be open-source as well as distributed, for those who want to participate more fully. To kickstart your own sloganeering, my original Photoshop files for sticker designs can also be downloaded and modified. Feel free to change the slogan, swap the picture, add colour, or whatever else you think might make for a punchy message.
When you’re done save a copy of the new sticker as a PICT or JPEG (rotated 90 degrees to fit the Avery label template) and drag-n-drop it into the Microsoft Word document to replace an old design. Then post your new version to this group for others to download and modify. I've created a new discussion board topic called "Sticker Virus" in the facebook group "Canadians United Against Steven Harper" for exchange of designs and other ideas. I suspect we can quickly evolve a sharp and potent message with enough participation.
3.--------------- "Sloganistas unite!"
Please forward this message to anyone you think might be sympathetic. Everyone is welcome to join this action. I consider it a non-partisan effort motivated by a revulsion for Stephen Harper which transcends political affiliations. I suspect even one-time Reformers and Progressive Conservatives may share this feeling.
Unlike Harper, most people can't afford to buy airtime for TV ads. This is a way for ordinary folk to get their message out there for a very small cost. But it needs you to get involved. As one person, I doubt I can have much impact with 600 stickers. But there's over 10,000 people in this group. If only 1 person in 5 participates, that's 2000 folks stickering; 2000 x 600 doses of ridicule; 1.2 million cracks in Harper's smooth and brittle facade.
For convenience, this link has also been posted to my Facebook page.
Alternatively, use the following web-addresses for direct download:
Description: Microsoft Word stickers - sheet one (mostly slogans): Filename: "harper_labels_6_mostly_slogans.doc" Size: 0.8 MB Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/4x2cqt
Description: Microsoft Word stickers - sheet two (mostly headlines): Filename: "harper_labels_6=5_mostly_quotes.doc" Size: 0.9 MB Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/3ufmbo
Description: Zipped folder of jpeg images used in Microsoft word documents (so you can swap them around if desired and just print your favorites): "Harper_jpegs_upload_1.zip" Size: 1.9 MB Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/44tyfk
Description: Zipped folders of photoshop images for modification: Filename: "Harper_photoshop_upload_all.zip" Size: 17.6 MB Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/5yemp6
Even though I'm not a Canadian yet, I could have voted. My father was a die-hard Tory in the U.K. and I'm liberal as to social issues. I'd also like to echo the AnyoneButHarper sentiment. He's the perfect Bush wanna-be and when Jean Chretien was Prime Minister, he and Bush didn't get along due to polar differences. Harper is on the same page as Bush and I hope Senator Barack Obama wins the presidency because I don't believe he and Harper will have much in common. I think this upcoming election has something to do with the corruption of the Harper government. I don't fully understand what I've heard from A-News (Barrie, Ont.) Harper wants to save his own backside.
Mark Kuznicki
· 1 year ago
Please note that we have changed our commenting policy in response to the barrage of angry Conservative supporters, internet trolls and sockpuppets that we've attracted.
We want to continue to support real and civil dialogue for members of our audience: the undecided Canadians and supporters of the Liberal, NDP, Green and Bloc parties who are concerned about another Harper conservative government and are thinking about so-called strategic voting this election.
Effective immediately, you will need to be a registered Disqus user for your comment to appear automatically without manual moderation. Anonymous unregistered comments will be held for moderation and we cannot guarantee how quickly they will be approved. We encourage all of our users to get a Disqus account and use a photo as an avatar. We've found this helps keep the dialogue more civil, and many sites now use Disqus so you don't have to register at every site where you comment.
We also encourage our users to "Record video comments", a great feature of Disqus and Seesmic. Tell your own stories and express yourself.
Any comments with offensive language/expletives or that consist primarily of ad hominem attacks against the people behind this site or other users will be deleted without notification.
Thanks for all the messages of support and please keep the dialogue going.
Richard
· 1 year ago
For the past week, Mr. Layton has attacked Stephen Harper and the Conservative government for mishandling the economy. According to Smilin' Jack, jobs were being lost, our financial institutions were in trouble and our economy was going to Hell in a handbasket. Mr. Dion, not to be outdone, jumped on the bandwagon announcing that he would impliment an immediate 30-day plan to reverse the terrible damage done to the economy by the Harper government.
Save us, please!
Have we become such a society of syncophants and psychotics that we are less interested in the truth than in illusion? Have our opinions, as unwarranted as they may be, become more important than fact?
The facts are that it is now recognized, globally, that Canada has the strongest banking sector in the world. Our banks....repeat...our banks are not in trouble and have significant government oversight in place to insure that they do not make the kinds of mistakes banks in the US, Iceland, France, Belgium and Great Britain made. We are not going to be bailing out our banks.
Statistics Canada released job numbers this morning which indicate the highest growth in jobs for September since Stats Can started keeping records. In other words, contrary to Jack and Stefan's rhetoric, jobs under the conservative government continue to be created at exactly the same time when governments in all of the other G8 countries are unable to make the same claim.
Here's what it comes down to. Whether you like his personality or not, Harper has kept a steady hand on the tiller and what is happening in the Canadian economy compared to the rest of the world pretty much proves that. You have a choice. You can vote based on your emotion and hope like hell that it doesn't cost you your job and your savings, or you can vote based on fact and know that Canada will be better off with someone running things who actually knows how to get the job done.
Mr. Dion's 30-day plan is to hold meetings with institutions and others to get advise on what to do. Hardly a plan and definitely not leadership. Mr. Layton's plan is to continue to mislead you and I with cheap shots and fabrications about the economy in the hope that he can frighten us into voting for him. Ask yourself if you are so easily manipulated and can't think for yourself. If you are, then by all means. Vote NDP or Liberal and hope for the best.
As for me, it's nobody but Harper. I'd rather go with a sure thing with a proven record in these harsh economic times than put my faith in folks who haven't demonstrated anything other than they know how to talk.
ThisCanadian
· 1 year ago
buhBYE SweaterVest Gringo Corporate Collaborator!
BUH BYE!!!
*SNOOPY*DANCE*
Spread Love, not corporate dependence...
BlueBerry Pick'n ThisCanadian.com ~~~ "... tolerance of intolerance is cowardice..." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali. "We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid. "Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence." ... "Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle" – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn " "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire ~~~ "Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
All Comments
We believe the Block or the Liberals or the NDP will all serve the interests of Quebec in Ottawa, and that the worst possible outcome is to give Harper free rein as a majority. He has shown himself a bully with his sleazy attack ads, his suppressing even the voices of his own ministers and candidates. He is a one-man show, probably groomed and financed by the same Texas oil interests who gave us George Bush.
Harper has always been a Bush wanna-bee. He identifies with the same US based far-rightist ideological groups, and fear-based war economy, and has no business taking Canada in these directions.
He came in with a regional party, and is now trying to convince us that the economic interests of Quebec and Ontario are the same as those of the resource based industries of Alberta. In fact we are fast losing our manufacturing base with the higher petro dollar. We’ve lost huge numbers of good jobs since Harper has been at the helm.
We are a country with the least adequate day-care of the G8 countries, where our much touted medical system is in disarray, and where support for the arts and culture industry in Canada is being undermined by Harper.
As Harper clearly supports the dirty oil and environmental degradation taking place in Alberta, and has been making this the center of future Canadian development, he is compromised and cannot implement any kind of carbon tax, or take a serious stand on urgent global environmental issues.
We, the Quebec women's ABC Caucus agree with your anything but harper campaign. At all cost, don’t split the vote. Help to defeat Harper’s gang in your riding.
Such speakers should not simply be from the usual left, but include "moderate" conservatives and religious leaders, farmers, police chiefs (e.g. the head of the Montreal Police Brotherhood just came out against voting Conservite yesterday), workers and business owners affected by the decline of the manufacturing and forestry sectors, economists against neo-conservative economic policies, as well as artists, women, youth, environmentalists and other representatives. Ideally, similar rallies would take place also in each province, but at least have these two, broadcasted on all news chanels and the Internet.
1st step: a meeting via Internet, phone or in person, to discuss this idea and, if accepted, plan, bring in others, share tasks, etc.
With less than 3 weeks left until the federal vote, I’d like to invite everyone to participate in a little electoral mischief.
The idea is to undermine Stephen Harper's control over his image through creative vandalism, to rebrand him through a grassroots, viral and distributed stickering campaign.
I’ve created various promo stickers combining Harper's blandly psychotic face with micro-slogans pitched somewhere between intrigue and mockery. ("Dinosaurs don't evolve" "Alberta Taliban" etc.) For variety there are a bunch of absurdist quotes - fake headlines well-suited to being slapped on newspaper vending boxes. Examples of both can be seen posted on my Facebook wall, or downloaded from the link at the end of this message.
Please join me! In hopes of reaching a critical mass, I've tried to make participating as easy as possible:
1.------------ “The people, divided, shall never be defeated!”
I’ve created a couple of Microsoft word files which can be downloaded from the link at the end of this message. Each file is formatted to print a batch of anti-Harper stickers onto standard 4” x 3 1/3" Avery inkjet labels (label ID# 05164). Both Office Depot and Staples stock Avery labels in this size, 100 sheets (600 labels per box) for around $35 (cheaper for a smaller number of sheets). If you have a computer and a printer, you’re in business.
While not weatherproof, the Avery labels stand up pretty well to rain, and their adhesive backing sticks to most surfaces. The sticker designs I've posted for download are black and white, both for economy, and because greyscale inkjet printing seems to smear less than colour when wet. The labels are partly perforated, but I find it easier to cut them up with scissors. I like to print about 10 sheets at a time, and slap them up on my way to work, or whenever I'm passing through a different neighborhood.
2.-------------- "Crowd-sourcing Dissent"
I hope this action will be open-source as well as distributed, for those who want to participate more fully. To kickstart your own sloganeering, my original Photoshop files for sticker designs can also be downloaded and modified. Feel free to change the slogan, swap the picture, add colour, or whatever else you think might make for a punchy message.
When you’re done save a copy of the new sticker as a PICT or JPEG (rotated 90 degrees to fit the Avery label template) and drag-n-drop it into the Microsoft Word document to replace an old design. Then post your new version to this group for others to download and modify. I've created a new discussion board topic called "Sticker Virus" in the facebook group "Canadians United Against Steven Harper" for exchange of designs and other ideas. I suspect we can quickly evolve a sharp and potent message with enough participation.
3.--------------- "Sloganistas unite!"
Please forward this message to anyone you think might be sympathetic. Everyone is welcome to join this action. I consider it a non-partisan effort motivated by a revulsion for Stephen Harper which transcends political affiliations. I suspect even one-time Reformers and Progressive Conservatives may share this feeling.
Unlike Harper, most people can't afford to buy airtime for TV ads. This is a way for ordinary folk to get their message out there for a very small cost. But it needs you to get involved. As one person, I doubt I can have much impact with 600 stickers. But there's over 10,000 people in this group. If only 1 person in 5 participates, that's 2000 folks stickering; 2000 x 600 doses of ridicule; 1.2 million cracks in Harper's smooth and brittle facade.
Best Regards,
--Jerry Boyle
-------------------------
-------------------------
All files can be downloaded from the following location:
http://cid-77af7031225d3858.skydrive.live.com/b...
For convenience, this link has also been posted to my Facebook page.
Alternatively, use the following web-addresses for direct download:
Description: Microsoft Word stickers - sheet one (mostly slogans):
Filename: "harper_labels_6_mostly_slogans.doc"
Size: 0.8 MB
Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/4x2cqt
Description: Microsoft Word stickers - sheet two (mostly headlines):
Filename: "harper_labels_6=5_mostly_quotes.doc"
Size: 0.9 MB
Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/3ufmbo
Description: Zipped folder of jpeg images used in Microsoft word documents (so you can swap them around if desired and just print your favorites):
"Harper_jpegs_upload_1.zip"
Size: 1.9 MB
Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/44tyfk
Description: Zipped folders of photoshop images for modification:
Filename: "Harper_photoshop_upload_all.zip"
Size: 17.6 MB
Tiny-url: http://tinyurl.com/5yemp6
Facebook Wall: http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.p...
I'd also like to echo the AnyoneButHarper sentiment. He's the perfect Bush wanna-be and when Jean Chretien was Prime Minister, he and Bush didn't get along due to polar differences. Harper is on the same page as Bush and I hope Senator Barack Obama wins the presidency because I don't believe he and Harper will have much in common.
I think this upcoming election has something to do with the corruption of the Harper government. I don't fully understand what I've heard from A-News (Barrie, Ont.) Harper wants to save his own backside.
We want to continue to support real and civil dialogue for members of our audience: the undecided Canadians and supporters of the Liberal, NDP, Green and Bloc parties who are concerned about another Harper conservative government and are thinking about so-called strategic voting this election.
Effective immediately, you will need to be a registered Disqus user for your comment to appear automatically without manual moderation. Anonymous unregistered comments will be held for moderation and we cannot guarantee how quickly they will be approved. We encourage all of our users to get a Disqus account and use a photo as an avatar. We've found this helps keep the dialogue more civil, and many sites now use Disqus so you don't have to register at every site where you comment.
We also encourage our users to "Record video comments", a great feature of Disqus and Seesmic. Tell your own stories and express yourself.
Any comments with offensive language/expletives or that consist primarily of ad hominem attacks against the people behind this site or other users will be deleted without notification.
Thanks for all the messages of support and please keep the dialogue going.
Save us, please!
Have we become such a society of syncophants and psychotics that we are less interested in the truth than in illusion? Have our opinions, as unwarranted as they may be, become more important than fact?
The facts are that it is now recognized, globally, that Canada has the strongest banking sector in the world. Our banks....repeat...our banks are not in trouble and have significant government oversight in place to insure that they do not make the kinds of mistakes banks in the US, Iceland, France, Belgium and Great Britain made. We are not going to be bailing out our banks.
Statistics Canada released job numbers this morning which indicate the highest growth in jobs for September since Stats Can started keeping records. In other words, contrary to Jack and Stefan's rhetoric, jobs under the conservative government continue to be created at exactly the same time when governments in all of the other G8 countries are unable to make the same claim.
Here's what it comes down to. Whether you like his personality or not, Harper has kept a steady hand on the tiller and what is happening in the Canadian economy compared to the rest of the world pretty much proves that. You have a choice. You can vote based on your emotion and hope like hell that it doesn't cost you your job and your savings, or you can vote based on fact and know that Canada will be better off with someone running things who actually knows how to get the job done.
Mr. Dion's 30-day plan is to hold meetings with institutions and others to get advise on what to do. Hardly a plan and definitely not leadership. Mr. Layton's plan is to continue to mislead you and I with cheap shots and fabrications about the economy in the hope that he can frighten us into voting for him. Ask yourself if you are so easily manipulated and can't think for yourself. If you are, then by all means. Vote NDP or Liberal and hope for the best.
As for me, it's nobody but Harper. I'd rather go with a sure thing with a proven record in these harsh economic times than put my faith in folks who haven't demonstrated anything other than they know how to talk.
BUH BYE!!!
*SNOOPY*DANCE*
Spread Love, not corporate dependence...
BlueBerry Pick'n
ThisCanadian.com
~~~
"... tolerance of intolerance is cowardice..." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
"Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence." ... "Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle" – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn "
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"